A note if you think you may have already read this post. You did. Your brain shut down because of the following section and won't let you remember it out of self defense. You should probably go read the Economist or something and come back later this afternoon.

This segues into a discussion of this new "Hudl" thing Dennis Dodd just discovered, which is so detailed that it even has… phone numbers. Therefore because Hudl there is no reason to have a camp. I'm not fisking this. This is not a fisk. I'm not

Here's the further hypocrisy: If satellite camps are truly about opportunities for recruits, it's about time to double down on that assertion.

Um, okay, and how would you do th

How about providing those same opportunities on the back end? Let college players participate in the NFL Combine without penalty. If they don't like their performance or draft projection, allow them to return to college and retain their eligibility.

AAAAAARGH WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING

THIS IS NOT A FISK

That jarring nonsequitur probably shut down many readers' brains and… just a second. Okay, I've prevented an infinite loop with the section at the top of this post. Anyway, in response to a satellite camp ban affecting high schoolers, Dennis Dodd suggests that the NCAA should loosen its rules for an entirely different cohort of people. He talks about the "hypocrisy" of people who don't like the ban without even gesturing towards a way in which their words and actions might conflict, and finally:

The whole satellite camp episode was a lot more about closing off Harbaugh than opening opportunities for all those deprived prospects.

This is 100% wrong. The clumsy total ban of satellite camps does significantly impact staffs and players around the country, leading to more unfortunate situations where a kid gets midway through his career only to discover that he's in the wrong place.

Gah. I'm going to do something more productive and argue with my plants.

There is a petition. While online petitions are of questionable efficacy, a big number on this one in what is essentially a PR battle might help something. Also it was started by Donovan Peoples-Jones's mother, which is interesting. We've heard a lot from current college athletes upset about the ban, but not so much from recruits. Even if this is indirect evidence it is evidence.

“The voting process, that’s a rabbled-up mystery too,” Leach said. “From what I understand, this is befuddling, and I do plan to find out because our conference voted to eliminate satellite camps, and yet the vast majority of schools in our conference were in favor of satellite camps.

“I can’t fathom how it’s possible we voted to eliminate it. I don’t know the details. Whether it’s smart, dumb or in the middle, it’s wrong. It’s wrong. If you’re some kid in south central LA who’s really worked hard at football and worked really hard for your grades, now all of a sudden you don’t have the opportunity to see as many schools as you would otherwise. That’s crazy.”

Leach said the vote will “further oppress low-income families.”

To be fair, the rule change was two sentences long. Hugh Freeze, he of the "you can't work because I don't want to work" quote, is also surprised about how words work in an Andy Staples article:

Monday morning, Freeze’s phone rang. On the other end was a coach wondering if he was no longer allowed to work the Ole Miss camp. The coach worked at an FBS school, and Freeze realized that coach would be banned by a rule passed Friday. … Freeze realized quickly that the ban had a serious consequence he hadn’t considered. In keeping Michigan coaches from working camps at high schools in Alabama, Florida and Georgia and Oklahoma State coaches from working camps at a Division III school in Texas, the schools also had banned Bowling Green coaches from working Ohio State’s camp and Arkansas State coaches from working the Ole Miss camp.

Freeze is clarifying his position into something even more selfish: you can work as long as you aren't competing with me.

“I would love to continue that,” Freeze said Monday. “I just don’t want satellite camps for the Power Five. I am for non-Power Five schools being able to attend and evaluate.”

This is so dumb it reminds me of the way college hockey works. We have a rule that 1) all athletes hate, 2) most of the Pac-12 hates despite the fact that they voted for this, 3) even people in support of it don't understand, and 4) turned the Sun Belt Commissioner into Perd Hapley. Staples again:

I’ve told you for a year that the satellite camp argument was one of the stupidest in the long and storied history of stupid NCAA rule arguments. It came to the stupidest logical conclusion Friday when a vote that should have been 11–4—because each Power Five conference vote counts double—against the ban came out 10–5 in favor of the ban.

Hugh Freeze's only asset as a coach is that he turns a blind eye to the most obvious bagmen in the country, and he will eventually be found out.

Yet another dumb thing. All other levels of football think satellite camps are fine. From an article on the impact to SMSB:

Despite the camp being held in Detroit, schools like Michigan, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Central Michigan and Eastern Michigan programs will not have the opportunity to scout and interact with potential recruits in what could be considered each program's own backyard. However, Football Champions Subdivision, Division II and other coaches will still be able to be in attendance.

This really is a rule that some selfish coaches voted into existence because they didn't want to be jackhammers.

The great Hackenberg debate of 2016 is not much of a debate. PFF posted a draft evaluation of Christian Hackenberg, presumably because they don't have a draftable grade for him and people keep asking them about it. They explained themselves. Witheringly so:

This season his completion percentage when adjusted for drops, spikes, etc. was 64.0 percent, which was 120th in the nation. In 2014, he was 105th. Every accuracy number you look at sees Hackenberg struggle, and the tape shows the same thing.

Even when under no pressure at all this past season, he completed just 61.9 percent of his passes. That’s the same completion percentage Cardale Jones managed on all plays, not just pressure plays, and Jones is a player whose accuracy is seen as a negative.

Hackenberg’s completion percentage under no pressure at all of 61.9 percent would only have ranked 44th in the nation, if it was his real completion percentage.

This goes on and on for paragraphs, each piling more problems on Hackenberg as an NFL quarterback. While it is by no means a nice evaluation it is backed by a ton of numbers and game charting and more or less confirms what any neutral observer saw out of Hackenberg over the course of his career: brief moments of being John Elway amongst a sea of turfed screens and airmailed out routes. Michigan got a taste of that last year when Hackenberg put together a couple of pinpoint, NFL throws on a day where his other accomplishments were seeing Jabrill Peppers misplay a jump ball and piloting an offense that barely cracked 200 yards.

At what point do I, as a Penn State alumnus and fan, step back and try to be even more subjective about the NFL draft stock of Christian Hackenberg?

Did you mean "objective"? Because it feels like you meant "objective," but then the rest of your piece makes me think that you actually meant "subjective" since it's all hand-waving at some pretty eye-popping stats. PSU fans seize on one error—the Allen Robinson catch at the end of regulation against M a couple years back is held up as a example of a bad decision without taking the game context into account—to dismiss the whole thing when it contains startling facts like "16% of Hackenberg screens are off target."

While I don't know exactly how PFF goes about their business, my grades and theirs for Michigan players generally line up*, and charting pass accuracy is probably the easiest thing I do. An outfit like PFF isn't going to be so far off with the above numbers that Hackenberg actually looks good. By a few hundred words into the piece it's clear that the dude is just swinging in the dark, and this…

Lack of Upside

lol, okay

…is waving a tiny punt flag in the face of a guy who actually put in the work. At least it led to one of the most entertainingly one-sided twitter fights in recent memory:

@PFF_Sam sure, feel free to cherrypick lowlights and use those to back up your contrarian conclusion, that's a thing normal people do

This was said in response to a piece that dealt with every Christian Hackenberg throw over the past two years. He might get drafted but only because there are mugwumps running NFL teams. Hi, Jed York!

*[To the point that when they were pumping up the Michigan D and noted that only one major contributor wasn't grading out very positive I knew exactly who that was because I also had one major contributor not grading out very positive.]

Michael Weinreb, writerist who does not mind bashing head against same wall

Weinreb poops on Michigan in print approximately every six months with whatever logic is at hand. The latest is at Rolling Stone. Weinreb points out that Harbaugh is crazy, because that's a new insight, and then launches into his usual concern trolling act:

Not surprisingly, given that Harbaugh is an undeniably brilliant football coach, this strategy is working. The Wolverines lured the nation's No. 1 recruit, Rashan Gary, and one of the country's best recruiting classes. But there are two underlying questions to consider here:

Here we go.

The first is whether this can possibly be sustained, or whether Harbaugh will eventually burn himself out, as he did at Stanford and with the 49ers.

Anyone still parading this line out after the Jim Tomsula experience is either so braindead they're writing a 12,000 word article on Daniel Holtzclaw or simply dishonest. Harbaugh left Stanford for a job with the 49ers after a 12-1 season that completed the most stunning turnaround in recent NCAA history. Stanford did not want to lose him. They left everything more or less the same after he left.

Harbaugh left the 49ers after a year-long disinformation campaign by Jed York, who emphatically proved he was the problem over the past year. 49ers players fled San Francisco en masse after Harbaugh's departure. York hired a vastly unqualified yes-man who may literally have been Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force to run the team into the ground and fired him after just one year. Harbaugh's final 8-8 season was an injury-riddled mess; in his absence Colin Kaepernick evaporated and the team barely crossed midfield in most games. If you're still on Team York in 2016, you have issues.

What happens, say, if Michigan beats Ohio State and qualifies for the College Football Playoff next season and a top-tier NFL job looms on the horizon?

Like they did two years ago? Like they did this year? I don't think Harbaugh's guaranteed to retire in Ann Arbor but if he wasn't deeply interested in a run of significance at Michigan he wouldn't be here in the first place. Meanwhile this worry boils down to "what if Harbaugh is good at his job?" Heaven forfend.

What happens if Harbaugh doesn't get something he specifically demands from the Michigan administration?

This has already happened. It will continue to happen. Harbaugh may not have many filters but neither is he a literal child who will pout and leave the first time he's told there are limits, which, again, has happened repeatedly already. This is a guy who has turned around four separate football programs. One of them was under Jed York. He is used to not getting what he wants. Meanwhile find me an NFL team without an owner.

Michigan's athletic department is self-sufficient. Again, you'd have to be an idiot or deeply disingenuous to even bring this up.

And the second question surrounding Harbaugh is what all of this might mean for college football.

Nothing? Other than Michigan might be good?

Maybe, by essentially professionalizing the recruiting process, Harbaugh is dispensing with the pretense that college football is still an amateur sport.

This is the sentence that finally broke me. For one, the idea that Harbaugh is "professionalizing" the recruiting process makes zero sense. All he's done is recruit a little harder within the rules and his weirdness has made that viral. No part of that is professionalizing anything.

Meanwhile, the SEC and ACC are tossing six figures at recruits. Nobody cares about this. Michigan's athletic director publicly and repeatedly asserted that Rashan Gary turned down money to sign with Michigan, and the media reaction was absolutely nothing. Again, I am all for the professionalization of something that is already de facto professionalized, but pretending like it's Harbaugh shaking the NCAA's foundational concept is the work of an idiot, a liar, or a lying idiot. None of this has anything to do with money.

But here's the thing: If you read beyond the headline of Sankey's complaint, he has a legitimate point. A Pac-12 study last year revealed that athletes in the conference spent an average of 50 hours a week on their sport and were often "too exhausted to study effectively." I have no idea if Sankey and his member schools are serious about exploring this idea, but this is the sort of concept on which the Big Ten should be leading the way.

He does not have anything approximating a point. Michigan isn't adding time. They are moving it. They are in fact moving it away from finals, for as much as that matters. They are moving practice time to a point where there is no studying to do.

As a student athlete, I like the idea of knocking out some of my spring practices when I don't have to worry about class.. #perspective

In reality, it doesn't matter either way. The players will put in the time, both in the Big Ten and SEC. A little money, a flight or two, doesn't matter. It'll help Michigan recruit, the players will get a bit of a tan, nobody will be negatively affected, end of story.

But Weinreb don't care. In six or nine or twelve months we'll get another of these. It's tradition. The man simply cannot be dissuaded no matter how bad these pieces look in retrospect. Remember this one?

I would worry that Harbaugh is doing this for the money (a reported $48 million over six years, which would make him the sport’s highest-paid coach) or out of some misguided sense of obligation to his alma mater, and that he is not prepared to play the game within the game by embracing the salesmanship of the job, the one key aspect college coaching demands that pro football doesn’t (see: Belichick, Bill).

Greg Sankey, malfunctioning corporate robot

“That had nothing to do with a particular program, just a concern of, wait, we have agreed to a recruiting structure,” he said.

We did, and it allows for coaches to act as guests for remote camps. You banned satellite camps amongst yourselves, but that's your business.

“… Are we going to allow the recruiting and the pressure on young people, the earlier recruiting, the bringing in boosters to practices to watch when you’re on these satellite camp tours?"

This is a non-sequitur, and particularly hilarious/infuriating coming from the SEC commissioner. Harbaugh shows up at camps. If players want to show up where Harbaugh is, they do so. If they don't want to go, they don't go.

Nothing about a satellite camp accelerates recruiting, and lol the SEC commissioner is talking about boosters. Greg Sankey is ON IT, guys. He'll get right to the bottom of this "booster" business, once and for all.

“Over and over I have sat in AFCA (American Football Coaches Association) meetings and heard football coaches say we don’t want football recruiting to go the way men’s basketball has gone, meaning, let’s try to anchor to the best we can our football recruiting in the scholastic environment. It’s around education, it’s around people who are supervised by administrators and school boards. That seems a healthy approach for recruiting, not going out to create other opportunities.”

…to be around football coaches in a camp environment that you have decided is perfectly fine as long as it is in a different geographical region. This is a complaint against 7-on-7 and Nike camps and Rivals camps and the like inartfully repurposed against Harbaugh.

Sankey is actually making an argument in favor of satellite camps, which bring NCAA compliance along with them and expose players directly to coaches without the intermediaries that infest basketball recruiting. This is the best argument he has against satellite camps: one in favor of them.

Mark Emmert, figurehead

NCAA prez Mark Emmert says NCAA will have April meeting focused on cutting back on time spent on athletics. Emmert believes it's too much

That's what "not prohibited" means. It means it is okay if you do it. I looked this up.

Maybe flatulent twit Mark Emmert should concentrate on enforcing the zillions of rules on the books currently that are being flouted more and more dramatically with every limp-wristed NCAA enforcement action.

Pat Narduzzi, personal foul enthusiast

If I was a high school player, and you’re telling me I couldn’t go to Cancun or Daytona on spring break, I’d be kind of like, ‘Are you serious?’

Think of the casual sex and drunken falling off of balconies. This is the fake-ass concern people opposed to Harbaugh have come up with: college football players are being denied a week of drinking at 9 AM. A Notre Dame recruit died over spring break in 2010. A few years later we're fighting for the sanctity of waking up in vomit that may or may not be yours.

You'll note that the ACC and SEC are trying to ban satellite camps, too, but they don't talk about that over and over again in public, because they don't have even a fake-ass pearl to clutch there. There is zero reason for satellite camps to be banned; doing that in fact hurts various kids trying to get noticed. Think of the children! Why won't anyone think of the children?

Horsefaces

Noted Northwestern graduate and Chicago Tribune contributor Teddy Greenstein published a piece yesterday evening entitled "Jim Harbaugh Drinks the Blood of the Innocent," in which he bemoaned Jiim Harbaugh's treatment of Erik Swenson. But then finally someone pulled an article about Michigan's side of the story out from behind a paywall, in the person of Michael Spath. Spath's article cites sources that say that Michigan informed Swenson of his status months ago, and that this was in no way as out of the blue as had been suggested.

Greenstein could have just gone quiet, or could have recrafted his article as a more general statement on the woes of modern recruiting. But instead, he doubled down.

As you probably know, I am not an insider, and to the extent I have information that is not already in the public domain, I do not plan to share. But in the interest of poking bad writing and logic with a stick, I thought I would share my thoughts on Mr. Greenstein's thoughts.

1. Much of the response was along the lines of: Hey, other coaches also dump verbal commitments. Why single out Harbaugh?

My response to that: I’m among the scores of college football columnists who have ripped SEC coaches for oversigning. What Harbaugh is doing, on this scale, is unprecedented among Big Ten coaches. And I cover the Big Ten.

First of all, what “scale” is this, and exactly what part is unprecedented? I’m guessing Teddy will fill us in on these things soon.*

*SPOILER: he doesn’t.

He began the practice at Stanford, using the shield of academics and the admissions office. Quarterback Kain Colter, who carried a 4.2 grade-point average and later led the fight to unionize college football at Northwestern, was dumped after he injured his throwing shoulder.

Does Greenstein have a problem with a team “dumping” a player for injury reasons? I can’t wait to find out.

Harbaugh is now dropping verbal commits when he thinks he can upgrade to a better player. Or a healthier one.

The circumstances of the departures vary widely, and the latest insisted his scholarship offer had not been pulled. But we’re talking about eight players. Eight. More info here in Mark Snyder’s Detroit Free Press piece.

Got it. So when a recruit (in this case Enis) comes out and explicitly says “my scholarship wasn’t pulled,” and no one contradicts that statement, he still gets the “the kid insists his scholarship wasn’t pulled” treatment, with the implication being “but we should be suspicious and can’t just take him on his word.” But when a kid comes out and says his scholarship WAS pulled suddenly, even when it is contradicted by other sources, we’re required to take it at face value.

Moreover, the suggestion that Michigan has pulled eight scholarships is just weird. He’s lumping the likes of Antwain Richardson (who from all indications the Michigan staff wanted), Vic Viramontes (who Michigan wanted, and who the MGoStaff REALLY wanted), and Matt Falcon (whose knee asploded several times), as well as situations where, to be tactful, qualification was an issue.

In one instance, a player coming off multiple knee injuries was told he could either retain his scholarship as a student or go elsewhere to play football. Some people have a problem with that. I don’t.

But wait, you just lumped him in with the eight. EIGHT, I say. Also, what about Harbaugh casting Kain Colter adrift in a life boat with a tiger because of a bum shoulder?

Harbaugh declined to comment Friday. A university spokesman emailed the Tribune to say "we won't be commenting at this time due to NCAA rules."

Couple of things here. First, this line was not in the original article that ran. It was added to subsequent versions, with no mention of a correction. Second, you'll note this was Friday, while the original article ran Thursday. Did Greenstein even ask for Michigan's side of the original story? There's no mention of it if he did. Also, keep that "NCAA rules" part in mind for later.

2: As I wrote, Harbaugh is taking advantage of a flawed system. For years players have decommited before signing day, “upgrading” and reneging on commitments. If you’re a Michigan fan, you might use that to justify Harbaugh’s methods.

But if Erik Swenson (much more on him below) was your son, would still feel that way?

If I’m Swen Swenson, (a) I have an awesome name, and would monogram everything I own, and (b) I would want my son to have the absolute best in everything. That’s how parenthood works. I’d bet my late father would have wanted me to receive multiple D1 offers. But I was 5’9” coming out of high school, and the world is a tough place.

You can argue about the relative merits of the current recruiting system all you want (and it’s a valid and important conversation), but when you write two articles using the word “Harbaugh” a total of 30 times, make no suggestion of any other coaches doing anything similar, use words like “mockery,” “greedy,” and “Nixonian,” and make a reference to Deflategate (which, still? Really? Do they not teach the Ideal Gas Law at Northwestern?), you have to say something that is specific to Harbaugh.

3: The most honest response to all this came from the Twitter feed @cubbygeorge: “GO BLUE whatever the costs!!!”

This is some next-level ad hominem shit right here. You don’t just attack the person rather than the position, you attack the person defending that person. One random person. With 33 followers. Who voluntarily roots for the Cubs.

4: The most interesting response came from Harbaugh’s Twitter feed, his only tweet since Sunday: “‘They said’ artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq and Anna Nicole married for love ‘... ‘They said’”

So apparently we should not believe “they” … whoever they is.

That… that’s not even an argument. That’s just the weirdest retweet ever.

5: Let’s review what Swenson, an offensive lineman from the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told the Tribune’s Bob Narang....”

In the interest of space, I'll just sumarize. You have all heard Swenson’s position; that he had NO indication that anything was amiss until a couple of days before the proverbial hammer dropped. Let’s remember that for a bit.

Also: “I was kind of taken back in the beginning, but that’s how those coaches are. There’s nothing you can change about them. They believe that’s how you should run the university and what’s best for the team. I was taken back. I fully intended to play there. I was nothing but loyal and was committed over two years. I helped them recruit several guys that are still there. I just felt used.”

This is where I am reminded how much this whole thing sucks. It has played out really poorly, and it left a kid who by all accounts LOVED Michigan without the opportunity he dreamed of. I feel bad for Erik Swenson. I just don’t know if he’s doing himself a service here.

6: A story that ran Friday on Michigan’s Rivals.com site, The Wolverine, included this:

"We have also been told by multiple sources (though admittedly one of those sources on the Michigan side) that the Swensons were told back in November that he no longer held a committable offer.

We were also told by a source out of Downers Grove that the Michigan coaches asked Swenson to camp at U-M over the summer so the staff could properly evaluate him (he refused) and we were told that it was understood that Swenson’s senior year would serve as an evaluation period because this coaching staff had never seen him in-person and wanted to know if he was a good fit for the program."

[ED: omitted additional unflattering comments from area coaches, for space and relevance]

So we have unnamed sources bashing Swenson OFF THE RECORD. ("Off the record," by the way, means not to be published. "On background" means you can use the information as long as it’s unattributed.)

This is where Teddy just loses me. There are very specific claims from Rivals, who is unquestionably a legitimate outfit with legitimate sources. Those claims are as follows:

Swenson was told back in November that he no longer held a committable offer.

Swenson was asked to camp at Michigan and refused.

The same Free Press article Greenstein links above contains a quote from Swenson’s OWN COACH who said, “we got some red flags three weeks ago, just comments made from coach encouraging Erik to make all five official visits (to other schools). That was the first indication it wasn’t heading in the direction we thought it was going.”

Greenstein’s entire rebuttal to this argument is that these sources are off the record. Not that they are wrong, or biased, or drunk. He doesn’t seem to recall that, as he mentioned like 500 words ago, Michigan *cannot* comment about him on the record. It’s an NCAA violation. Besides, not everyone is off the record on background (ed: sorry, I did not go to Medill). Swenson’s own high school coach contradicts his story that Michigan lurched from the shadows like Brutus attacking Julius Caesar and metaphorically stabbed him in the back.

And Greenstein doesn’t want to believe this. Which, okay, I guess. There are two sides, and you can choose to believe whomever you want. But if Rivals’ sources say Michigan told Swenson months ago (and, FWIW, they are NOT the only ones saying so), and it is empirically true that rumors have floated on insider boards for weeks, and Swenson’s coach claims he knew something was up weeks ago, you have to at least TRY to explain why you reject all of that information in favor of the story of the recruiting equivalent of a jilted ex. Everyone knew but him, and none of these other conversations ever happened. His high school coach never mentioned it. None of his classmates or teammates or fellow recruits saw this information and passed it along so Erik could ask Drevno what was up. Occam, noted non-Medill graduate, is confused.

7: What’s interesting about The Wolverine piece is that it ignores stories that ran on its own website. From September to December, it ran two stories on Swenson.

Oct. 16: “Swenson is a Staple” … 743 words without a hint of any negative vibes from the coaching staff...

Nov. 13: “Swenson with the Scoop” … 401 words, again without a hint of any negative vibes from the coaching staff...

Does this sound like a player who was informed by coaches over the summer that his offer was conditional, that he was subject to an “evaluation period?”

Behold, the bait and switch. Rivals didn’t know in mid-November that Swenson’s situation had changed, therefore there was no way Swenson knew it had changed. And if you think about that for more than two seconds, it doesn’t pass the smell test. If you get a questionable performance review at work, that doesn’t get published in the company newsletter. If you’re failing, say, Journalism 100, no one issues a press release. For the kids who Michigan loses because they don’t qualify, Rivals didn’t run weekly updates on their Algebra scores.

The fact that Michigan didn’t bash Swenson publically is both logical and “ethical,” if we want to use that word. Teddy, you asked before how you would feel if you were Swen Swenson, to which I reply (a) monograms, and (b) I’d rather not see a Rivals headline saying “Michigan Questioning Whether Swenson Can Cut It,” both because it would be cruel and because it would taint him for other schools.

8: If Michigan was souring on Swenson in the fall, Harbaugh should have sat him down, looked him in the eye and told him exactly how he felt.

Dear reader, I ask you to go re-read point #6. The same point #6 that Greenstein brushed off, and made NO effort to contradict. According to Spath’s sources, Michigan sat Swenson down in the fall, looked him in the eye, and told him exactly how they felt.

9: I hope Harbaugh remains at Michigan for another 20 years because college football is way more interesting with him around. I also hope he realizes that the way he’s acting is unseemly. A great school deserves better.

One could say the same of a great publication. But sometimes people end up places above the level at which they can reasonably compete.

We can debate the merits of how Jim Harbaugh, or Michigan, or any school handles recruiting. But You have to start with the facts.

I used to fisk things, back in the long long ago when people referred to the "MSM" seriously and I had a tiny platform compared to the people writing dumb things that annoyed me. These days most of those people are in other jobs and I gradually got over the fact that Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.

If that paragraph sounds like one big run up to me fisking the everloving pants off of something, yuuuuup. It's a teenager rage tactic from the dawn of mom's basement jokes. And it is absolutely required for this.

The prison system of America: overcrowded, broken, scourge of the inner city. This is an unusual topic for Matt Hayes.

Yet here we are, heading into a new era of college football with a brand new postseason, and the same old problems exist: players can’t seem to control themselves behaviorally off the field — no matter the consequences.

Oh goddammit. I have no idea what Matt Hayes's audience is these days since the Sporting News has died so many times cats are impressed but it must consist heavily of people who buy gold from Glenn Beck at 5 AM and think we should deport the Irish.

It turns out that professional aspirations and the threat of running stadium steps are in fact a great motivator to stay out of trouble.

“Because,” one Power 5 coach told Sporting News, “we can’t reach them where it matters most.”

Their penis.

That place, everyone, is the NFL.

I still think it's… let's come back to this.

If this were a relationship, it would have been dissolved long ago. College football gives everything to the NFL in every way, shape and form. The NFL gives nothing in return.

Now it’s time for the NFL, which for decades has thrived with the backdrop of a free minor league system that recruits, trains, teaches and ministers to young men before they step foot into the multi-billion dollar business, to give back.

Free minor league? What the…? I mean, yeah, the NCAA does act as a talent feeder, but the NFL only came into existence because the NCAA made football so popular that people tried and failed to make it into a nationwide pro sport for decades after Yost built a stadium that seated 100k. The NCAA is absolutely overrun with cash. The NFL doesn't owe it anything because it is impossible to owe a machine that prints money something. College football exists because it is profitable to exist, and not because of the NFL.

That means giving back the only way they can: controlling the flow of future money.

Shit is about to get real. This is the last semi-sane sentence here.

You want college football cleaned up?

No. We are currently making fun of how Mark Richt has lost control of everything because his players continually get in moped incidents.

Your article about the RASH OF ARRESTS SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL includes two marijuana possession charges, a DUI, an "obstructing governmental operations" misdemeanor, five guys who were immediately booted from their teams, and then four incidents spread across 120 teams that are serious-ish and still pending resolution. One of those is, yes, a moped joyride. I'm surprised Jameis Winston's crab legs aren't on there.

You want players who get second, third and fourth chances to finally see the game really is about both football and an education and learning about living and surviving and growing on your own?

I would like to see a system in which 75% fewer arrests transpire! But we already have…

You want this seemingly endless string of player arrests and violence against women to end?

The NFL can make this very simple and succinct. Any college player interested in employment in the league must pass a background check, and if they have a history of arrests or off-field issues, they immediately are moved into a — here’s the key — significantly lower earning bracket for the first four years of their employment.

How significant? Well below league minimum, or about $50,000-$75,000 a year.

Take a guess what the average league lifespan is for a player: four years.

The NFL can make it very simple if they negotiate an entirely new CBA that strips people with a history of "off-field issues"—like not even arrests—of potentially millions of dollars even if they're the top pick in the draft. Where is the line here? Does a pot arrest trigger it? How about a theft that got diverted into something that doesn't pop up on your criminal record?

And while this isn't relevant to the thrust of the article, let me state that saying "here's the key" when your platform is one plank long makes me want to flush your computer down a toilet, horseface. To have a "key" you have to have things that are more or less important, and it is impossible for a thing to be more or less important than itself. Obviously. Horseface.

“You have to understand, it’s more than just suspending a player and saying you’re going to miss X number of games for what you did,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban. “You have to change the behavior; you have to change the way the player thinks and acts.”

What better way than by taking away his ability to earn?

Yeah man why not just steal millions of dollars away from poor people who screwed up once because the Olds are scared of 'em.

I mean obviously the criminal justice system that looked at whatever these violations are and said "eh, do your time" is completely incapable of preventing this country from descending into a lawless morass. Let's take over from them. That is outside the justice system's core competency and right in ours.

This drastic yet necessary turn takes the onus off schools and the presidents of those schools to police behavior, the same people who have proven over and over that they have too much invested in players to make decisions that could impact those investments.

"Necessary." Because college football players get arrested one fourth as often as the average Joe.

“No one wants to look at this for what it is,” said another Power 5 conference coach. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

A vicious cycle is a feedback loop. The theory here is apparently that football players getting arrested and catching hell or getting booted by their coaches makes other football players more likely to commit crimes. I can only imagine this quote comes from Tim Beckmann, who tells his toaster every morning not to viciously cycle his bread, and then finds out he's talking to the washing machine again.

The first logical hurdle would be the NFL Players Association, which would be against anything that limits earning ability. But in the long run, it benefits both the NFL and the NFLPA to have players who understand right from wrong; who comprehend that every decision has consequences.

I mean Ray Lewis kind of murdered a dude. You know that, right? A guy ended up dead largely because of Ray Lewis, and the NFL fined him a quarter-million dollars and said "don't do it again." Nobody noticed or cared. If you want the NFL to fix college kids it is possible they should start with themselves.

You don’t punch someone in the head, and a year later, get picked in the second round of the draft and make significant money.

You don’t slap a woman, and a year later, get picked in the second round of the draft and make significant money.

It’s not like we’re breaking ground with this idea. Players will find in the real world, where you don’t get paid to play a game, employers don’t look too favorably on those with criminal records. And if they do, it certainly isn’t for much more than an entry-level job with minimum pay — until the employee proves to be worthy of more.

Even aside from guys named Ray who play for Baltimore, have you ever read any of the copious anonymous crap your own damn magazine publishes about players every time the draft rolls around? The NFL's official site said Johnny Manziel had an "outlaw mentality"! The NFL is constantly probing every potential mental gap and making tut-tutting judgments about every player. Those last until the instant that player proves he's pretty good in the NFL, and then you can knock your damn wife unconscious and you get a lesser suspension than Terrelle Pryor got for getting some free tattoos.

This is the way the world works. The sooner players understand and grasp this concept, the better for all involved.

The way the world works: pretend it never happened and refuse to apologize until people forget about it. This is my advice to you about this column.

we're going to have a picture of Kain Colter at this press conference from ALL THE ANGLES

BiSB's terrific post earlier today covers much of the ground I wanted to, except from a lawyer who actually knows what he's talking about. I did want to put my two cents in, because approximately 74% of the comments I've read in the aftermath of the NLRB's decision make me want to find the person and shake them, shouting something along the lines of "HAVE YOU EVER MADE A COHERENT ARGUMENT IN YOUR GODDAMNED LIFE?!?"

So let's address these things. These are actual MGoBlog user comments. I'd say I'm sorry if I picked yours, but I'm not.

THIS IS THE END

I could definitely see Northwestern arguging that football athletes shouldn't get special treatment over all the other sports, etc and just dropping it the way Chicago did.

So… your theory is that Northwestern will drop football, get kicked out of the Big Ten, lose about 99% of their athletics revenue, and pay for its nonrevenue sports out of its own pocket because the football players have the right to collectively bargain. The people making this decision will be throwing away countless hours of free marketing, making their school less attractive to prospective students, and essentially firing themselves.

Also, this will basically destroy the MAC and other small schools. They don't have the budget to negotiate anything. I foresee schools dropping football or going to non-scholarship.

This is an argument that the future system might be unfair because it treats all athletes the same when some of them are worth more than others. I'm sure if we think about this very hard for a very long time I can come up with a flaw in that.

The MAC may not be able to provide the same sort of financial support that bigger schools can. This will undoubtedly crater their recruiting, which features many head-to-head wins against the Big Ten.

Won't this cripple many athletic departments and force them to drop sports? Perhaps not Michigan, but schools of lesser stature?

Maryland recently dropped several sports.

There are broad swathes of schools playing NCAA sports, and most of them are going to be completely unaffected by this decision. To be an employee you have to be involved in economic activity, and most NCAA schools are spending, not making money. The top and vast bottom are going to be fine. There is a middle tier of schools that face a choice between narrowing their focus to keep up with the Joneses and abandoning their dreams of being Louisville.

The problem is: they already face that choice. They run with a D-I minimum of sports and throw their resources at the revenue generators. This won't "cripple" them any more than their already short resources do.

Maryland dropped several sports because it was run by an idiot, a problem orthogonal to this discussion.

if this decision stands they will have just walked tens of thousands of student athletes right out of college sports. title IX will be effectively gutted. your daughter that wanted to row/field hockey/basketball, etc, kiss that good bye. your son who wanted to play a sport that really doesn't generate revenue, say gymnastics, wrestling, and track, well that's all done too. nice job [insert expletives here].

There are 311 Division II institutions that make zero money on sports. There are 449 D III institutions. There are hundreds—thousands—of D-II and D-III field hockey, rowing, basketball, gymnastics, wrestling, and track programs. The chance that a high revenue program that has to deal with a player union is forced to drop sports is very low, and the overall number of opportunities to participate in intercollegiate athletics is not likely to change in any significant way.

And even if it did, I don't think there's any compelling reason to privilege generally wealthy nonrevenue athletes over the general student population and especially the relatively poor and underprivileged revenue athletes.

IT'S ALREADY FAIR

The athletes do not draw in the money. The name does. Michigan Football brings in the revenue. I didn't watch Denard any more closely than Sheridan. I don't watch Derrick Walton more often than Darius Morris. Have you ever said you were going to stop tuning in because a player left? Probably not, so it's not the players drawing in the money. The coaches play a big role, because they determine which players get recruited and how well the team performs (more fans watched Beilein than Amaker, for example).

Lots of players come and go every year, and the amount of revenue is not affected.

The hell you say. Traffic patterns during the last two football seasons here certainly indicate a correlation between success and engagement, and while football teams have a pile of goodwill built up all you have to do is look at ticket availability at Minnesota versus Wisconsin, or Northwestern, or Purdue, or Indiana to get an idea that the players make the name over a long period of time. If Michigan had a string of 3-9 seasons over the last 30 years, Michigan Stadium would be a decaying half-full wreck.

Meanwhile, I note you compared Derrick Walton to… uh… Darius Morris. I will expect a full report on the details of Gavin Groninger's career by Tuesday, in exacting detail.

So a 4 year full ride scholarship is not getting paid? This concept is a mockery of the system.

It may or may not be a 4 year full ride, and that full ride is not like getting an engineering degree (most of the time—I see you, Jordan Morgan). Many of the kids coming in are under-prepared to get a meaningful degree and have to spend 50 hours a week year round on their chosen sport. For many the value of their degree is approximately zero, both in terms of vocational knowledge gained and their ability to apply that to a real world job.

This is not because they did not "take advantage of their opportunity." It is because the opportunity was to play football and the rest of it was window dressing.

Also, CAPA was arguing that the scholarship is payment. The issue is that these players are compensated, making them employees, and the NCAA illegally colludes to cap compensation at a certain amount. That is not legal.

And the system is a mockery of you, man.

It's not free labor, they pay them in the form of education, meals, $1,200 month stipend, etc. Nobody is telling these kids that they can't go to college unless they play football, they can take the normal route and get student loans and be a normal student. That's what grinds my gears about the whole thing.

They are telling them that this is the deal, take it or leave it, if you want to get to the NFL. And oh by the way as you're embarking on your probably-failed quest to have an NFL career that's going to be about 3 years long even if you do make it, we are going to make millions of dollars off your single outstanding skill.

It is ludicrous that everyone in college is all about getting theirs and we bristle at the idea of the players doing the same. Any moral high ground the NCAA had—and they did try to cap assistant pay back in the day—is 20 years gone.

This was capably addressed by BiSB: the NLRB has nothing to do with the IRS and vice versa, and even if it did the way the law is currently written athletic scholarships should already be taxable. If anything, negotiating a provision that the scholarship still applies even if the player leaves the team puts the non-taxability of scholarship on more solid footing. Meanwhile, room and board money is already taxed.

If the medical benefits, etc. that these players want really comes to fruition, what is that going to do to ticket prices? The schools are going to try to come up with some sort of calculations as to what these new benefits to the players is going to cost and almost certainly try to figure out where the money is going to come from to fund the new player benefits. Odds are it's going to be the consumer (ie - fans) that are going to be asked to help fund the new player benefits.

If ticket prices had any relationship to the cost of supporting the athletic department they would not have quadrupled in real dollars since 2000. If NCAA athletic departments were not trying to wring out every last dime they can already, Rutgers and Maryland would not be joining the Big Ten next year to the outrage of 90% of current Big Ten fans. If athletic departments could not afford to shift some of their money towards the athletes under their care, coaching salaries would not have gone up 70% since 2006.

Does this mean that Northwestern can fire all of their underperforming players and replace them with better ones now?

Hello old 48. Michigan will un-retire Gerald Ford's #48 and make him a legend jersey type thing guy. Unfortunately, these days centers are not allowed to wear #48, so it'll be some defensive guy. They'll hand it out this fall:

"We're honoring Desmond Howard now every year with one of our players (senior receiver Roy Roundtree) who really deserves it," Hoke told the station. "We're going to do the same with Gerald Ford's jersey here this year."

If I can make a request (I cannot) could this not be Jordan Kovacs? Or, like, anyone who has established themselves as a guy with a particular number? Kovacs is 32. Roundtree is 12, except he'll be 21 this fall, and that will negatively affect how he's remembered because he won't be consistently one thing. This may be a crazy argument. It is my argument, though, so I say I'd rather have Kovacs keep 32 and have everybody who wears it after him remind me that once we had a really good walk-on safety.

The legends patch thing is good for honoring past legends but switching numbers up makes it hard to create new ones. I hope they start using them as recruiting incentives instead of flipping seniors to new numbers every year. Also the patch should be subtler.

A text message reading along those lines might appear on cellphone screens of basketball recruits starting Friday, after a new NCAA rule takes effect allowing college coaches to send unlimited text messages to players who have completed their sophomore year of high school.

Coaches also will be able to make unlimited calls to those recruits under the new legislation.

…if you are a men's basketball recruit. Also, coaches can call players whenever they want… if you are a men's basketball recruit. Basketball's trying to chop out pages of annoying rules minutiae so they can focus on the comically oversized bags with dollar signs on them that many players tote from class to class.

Whitmer's coach is quoted in the above article worrying about an avalanche of phone calls his kids will have to field, so let me reissue a suggestion: the NCAA should allow recruits to have a nonbinding commitment to a school that prevents them from taking officials and coaches other than the one they've committed to from contacting them. Even without that, that's a good decision I hope they generalize to more sports.

File under "yes, please."Smart Football details a reverse-type play that Gus Mahlzahn is a fan of that I wouldn't mind seeing added to Michigan's playbook:

Seems like a great way to mix up the speed option look Michigan ran a lot of last year without forcing Denard to make a pitch decision. Malzahn and Dana Holgorsen are running it a lot… it could be a decent idea. A diagram:

But a four-team deal certainly presents no opportunity to the Stony Brooks of college football. The champions of the Sun Belt, Mid-American Conference, Conference USA and Western Athletic Conference (should it survive) never will make that cut. The Mountain West and even the Big East would be long shots.

Football, greedy and decentralized, doesn't care.

Meanwhile, the rest of college sports give the little guys a chance to do it on the field. It gives life to the overachiever stories that are a large part of what makes sports compelling.

…those teams are now in BCS conferences if you consider the new-look Big East a BCS conference, which you probably shouldn't. A four team playoff does occasionally let in the champions of those leagues, should those champions actually seem like a worthy contender. If it's a "long shot," Forde notes earlier in his own column that the last time a Stony Brook-type interloper made the CWS it was 1986, when the regionals were literally regional. Hypothetical Four Team Playoff has a better record of including outlying provinces than the college world series. Just because TCU isn't a have-not anymore doesn't mean they weren't when they rose to prominence, and the minnow drought in the CWS is an argument in favor of a more streamlined field.

I will say this: if you are going to do the thing where everyone gets a chance no matter how likely it is they get their heads beaten in, Forde's system is a good one. It's a twelve-team field with 11 champions—more likely 10 since the WAC is dead—and one or two autobids. Byes, homefield, etc. The only objections you could level would be Think Of The Children arguments about missed class and too much football that evidently don't apply at any other level of the sport.

Dennis Dodd made this same argument. In short: since Boise State and TCU are now in power conferences, no one outside a power conference can be relevant. Mmmm self-defeating argument.

Etc.: North Carolina troubles are even more troubling now that a totally fake class has been exposed. Could this be the straw that finally causes the NCAA to annihilate someone? Probably not.